Chapter 432 — The Counterstroke III (Bonus)

Chapter 432: Chapter 432 — The Counterstroke III (Bonus)

Farrell was on the radio to the other formations. The Spire pushed hard on the eastern houses, and Saoirse’s group pinned the British at the chapel. The weight came off Farrell’s farmyard, and the British attack stalled and started to go back.

James was watching it go back when he saw her.

---

Eleanor Harcourt came down the north road from the junction with three British Challengers behind her, walking, not running.

She saw James at once.

She did not stop or slow down this time. She did not walk along a hedge looking at the Irish line. She came straight across the road toward him with her sword low.

She knew exactly what he was. She was not going to spend any time finding out.

James met her in the road.

---

The first exchange was faster and harder than at the bridge.

She came in high, then low, then high again, all three before he had his feet set. He took the first on Durendal and the second on the guard, and the third went past his ear close enough that he felt the air of it. He went back two steps.

She came after him.

He stopped going back. He planted his feet and swung at her square. She did not want to take it square, and she had to, and she gave ground.

She remembered. He saw it on her face. She did not try it again.

From then on she did not take a single blow straight. Every time Durendal came at her she was a fraction off its line, letting it slide off her blade or past her shoulder, then coming in from an angle he was not ready for. She was making him swing at places she had just left.

He tried the Necro Blast.

He started to bring his left hand up, and she was inside it before the black had even formed. She was on his left side, with her sword at his wrist. He jerked his hand back and the cast went nowhere.

He tried it again a minute later, and she did it again.

She had learned too. She knew what his hand did now. She was watching it, and every time it started to come up, she came in at it. She did not need to kill him with it. She only needed to make sure he never got to use it.

He stopped trying.

---

The three-legged skeleton was at the edge of the road where he had left it.

James sent it out into the open ground to Eleanor’s left, the side she had been using all fight. Every time he swung, she went that way, a step off his line and round to her left.

The skeleton came out into it.

She saw it. She saw what it was for. It was not there to hurt her. It was there to take away the space she wanted.

She turned and put her sword through its spine in one stroke. It folded up in the road.

But she had to turn to do it.

James was already coming.

He did not swing at her body. He swung where she had to go to get back square to him. She brought her sword across to block it, a fraction late. Durendal hit her guard and went on through, across the plate over her right ribs, and the plate split.

She went back.

And she brought her sword round as she went, short and fast, along his left side under the arm.

It went through his coat and into him. He felt it go in. Then he felt it come out, and the heat came after it, and the blood.

He took a step back.

It was not deep. He could feel it was not deep. But it was in the side, and every time he moved his left arm it pulled.

She looked at him. He looked at her.

He came back at her.

---

She was using everything round them now.

Every time he came at her she gave a step toward her own people. If he followed too far, he would be in front of a dozen British rifles. If he did not, she got her space back and came again. If they stayed in this road she would win it, just by waiting for him to make a mistake.

The new skeleton, the one with its neck broken, was still standing behind the farmyard wall where he had pulled it back to. It was thirty metres off, behind him and to his right. That was inside forty metres. And there was nothing round it, no British anywhere near.

He let Eleanor push him back one more step toward it, and then another.

She came in at his left, the wounded side, as he had known she would.

`[GRAVE STEP — MANA COST: 120]`

`[MANA: 2,190 / 3,100]`

The world folded and he was behind the wall beside the skeleton, thirty metres away. The bad second came. His balance went and the ground was in the wrong place.

He was behind a wall, though, and she was not there. That was the point.

When his feet came back, he went up over the wall. He did not go back to where she was. He went at the side of the road, to her right, where she had nobody and no building, nowhere to go but toward him.

She had turned to find him. She found him a second late.

Durendal came down across her left shoulder.

It went through the edge of her shoulder plate and into her. He felt it bite. She made a sound, the first sound he had heard her make, and went back three steps with her sword arm still up and her other arm hanging.

He went after her.

A British Challenger came off the road on his left. James had not seen him coming. He was a big man with a mace, and he came straight at James’s wounded side. James had to turn and get Durendal up, and the mace hit it so hard his arms went numb.

He dealt with him. It took him four exchanges, and then the man was down in the road.

`[CALL OF SOULS — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 2,220 / 3,100]`

By the time he turned back, Eleanor was thirty metres up the north road, holding her shoulder. She was walking backward toward her own people, with a British section moving in round her to cover her. Ten rifles were pointed down the road at him.

He did not go after her.

He could have. He knew that. He was faster than her and she was hurt. He might have got there. He would have done it alone, straight up the middle of a road full of British rifles, with a hole in his side.

She looked back at him once, over her men’s heads. Then they took her up the road and out of sight. She was hurt, and she was alive.

---

After that the British could not hold the junction.

"*All call signs, Farrell. Go. Take the junction.*"

James went up the road with the soldiers, holding his side. Across the junction, Finn was keeping the last British Challengers in the two-storey building off the soldiers while they cleared the windows.

The British were fighting to get away now, not to keep it. Two of their Challengers stayed at the north edge of the junction, buying time while their infantry went past them up the north road.

He went at one of them.

"*Ganner. Farrell. Stop. We have the objective. Do not pursue past the junction. I need you here.*"

He stopped.

He looked at the British Challenger, who was looking at him, and the two of them stood for a second in the road.

Then he turned back toward the junction.

The British went north in good order, with their rear covered. The junction was Irish again, and it was the first time since the border that James had seen Ireland win something that big.

---

An hour later Farrell’s unit was counting four killed and fourteen wounded from the morning. The battalion from Drogheda had lost more.

Marcus came across the junction with three of the Spire behind him. There was blood on his sleeve that did not seem to be his. He found Finn and James at the petrol station forecourt.

"Either of you hurt?"

"Not me," said Finn. Then he looked at James properly, at the side of his coat. "Oh. You are."

"Harcourt," said James. "Under the arm. It’s not deep."

Marcus looked at it. He did not touch it. He looked at the way James was holding his arm.

"Get it seen to," he said. "Before you do one more thing. I mean that." He looked at James a moment longer. "You did well up there. Both of you."

Saoirse came over from the west road, wiping her sword on a rag.

"Harcourt?"

"Got away. I put Durendal through her shoulder. They covered her out."

"They lost four Challengers on the western side alone," she said. "They’re going to feel today. Doesn’t mean they’re finished."

Nobody said that they were.

---

Owen was at the casualty point, behind the farm at the bottom of the road. He was helping carry stretchers from the ambulances into the barn.

James stopped beside him.

"Are you hurt?"

"No." Owen did not stop. "No. I’m fine."

He set down his end of the stretcher. Then he looked up the road toward the junction.

"Are they going to hold it this time?" he said.

"I don’t know," said James. "That’s up to them." He nodded at the officers on the forecourt. "But we pushed them a lot further back than last time."

Owen nodded. He did not say anything for a while.

"Do you know where they took Quinn?" he said. "From the yard this morning."

"Ask at the barn door. They’ve got a list."

"Right," said Owen. "Thanks."

He went.

---

Finn found James at the barn.

"Eamon’s going to be unbearable," Finn said. "About this. Us taking it back without him."

"He’ll say we couldn’t have done it without him."

"He’ll say it about the lane."

"He’ll be right about the lane."

"That’s the worst part," said Finn.

James laughed. It pulled at his side and he stopped.

---

Late in the afternoon, Farrell got the word from the colonel.

The operation had worked. The British had pulled back from the junction and from every position they had taken in the night. The roads were Irish again. The sectors south of Dundalk were joined up, and the gap was shut.

She read it out to the unit, standing on the forecourt.

Some of them cheered. Some were sitting against the walls and did not look up. Finn smiled, small but real. Across the junction, Marcus was talking to the colonel, and Saoirse was going through which British Challengers had got away.

Farrell stood beside James.

"Thank you," she said. "For the yard this morning. For Harcourt." Then she turned back to her list.

James was on his way to find a medic when another officer came across the forecourt with a tablet.

"Ma’am. They’ve pulled back north of the town and they’re regrouping. They didn’t expect the size of this morning. But nobody’s saying they’re going home."

"Understood. We’ll be ready when the wounded are done."

"Will they come back?" said James. "Soon?"

Farrell looked north.

"I don’t know what they’ll do next," she said. "I know we took a position they’d brought half their Challengers to hold, and made them give it back. That’ll do for today."

James looked up the north road. Eleanor Harcourt was up there somewhere with Durendal’s mark in her shoulder, and the column that had been coming south for three days was going north.

He turned round. Finn was already walking toward the barn.

They had people to check on.

James followed him.